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Short Stream | Daadhi blends comedy and commentary on newsroom madness

Oct 02, 2024 06:15 PM IST

Prashant Pandey’s film on TV news and identity politics is a winning combination of humour, pathos and satire

It is by now a stodgy pop culture — and national — cliché that TV newsrooms are vile. TRP greed fuelling narcissism, hysteria and lies — switch on TV news, and the screaming agents of TV news hysteria ambush you. It's not surprising that this setting has inspired more oversimplified, fly-on-the-wall screenplays in Hindi movies than fun or complex satires.

PREMIUM
A poster of Daadhi: The Beard (2022)(PERPETUAL PICTURES )

Prashant Pandey’s short film Daadhi: The Beard (2022) is a breezy exception. Combining satire, pathos and a big dollop of humour, he tells a funny, economical story.

The story goes: A failed method actor turned idealistic journalist who always pitches farmer suicide stories to his boorishly absurd boss, a TV showman, has to once save the channel by impersonating a Muslim fundamentalist on prime-time news debates. He puts on a fake beard, channelises what he has heard from a friendly Muslim autorickshaw driver, and almost has the ratings soar when an unexpected turn of events reveals his identity. But the really absurd twist of the story is that this fake Muslim man becomes the conscience-keeper of a community he doesn’t belong to. The laughs are had at the expense of all, writer-director Pandey disregarding rigid, preachy notes about religious discrimination. His screenplay motto is to laugh at all — and what a refreshing take that is. In fact, the protagonist, which actor Saharsh Kumar Shukla plays with understated competence, is a master of ideological subterfuge: The answers, he says, are blowing in the wind. In Hindi translation, especially in the schema of Daadhi, that line sounds less profound and more practical and gritty. Anupriya Goenka, a prolific actor in Hindi films and TV series, plays the other lead role and is also an executive producer in the film.

Watch the film trailer here:

Pandey, 43, was born and raised in Ayodhya, at a time, when he says the town went by a collectively accepted and unquestioned life mantra, “Samanvayvad” or coming together, adjustment and communion. “In practice, it roughly translates to each to his own. I don’t remember much tension or hostility among people from my early childhood. But around the late 80s, I remember many people came from other states, mainly Gujarat and Maharashtra, to work in Ayodhya, and of course, in the 1990s it became a different town,” Pandey says. 

A graduate of English literature, Pandey tried news reporting at ANI and other news writing and gathering stints before studying Mass Communication at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia and then moving to Mumbai to make it as a screenwriter and director. Pandey directed several episodes of the hit TV show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and went on to be mentored by Ram Gopal Varma. He wrote the script of Sarkar 2, Varma’s second in the Sarkar trilogy; he has also written song lyrics. “RGV taught me how to watch films like a director, and that was a kind of a turning point in my career,” Pandey says.

A still from Daadhi: The Beard (2022) (Perpetual Pictures)

In 2015, he produced, wrote and directed Stunt Boy, a child who is in love with violent films and who is completely insulated from violent realities around him. “This film continues to play in children’s film festivals across the world,” Pandey says.

This film is based on his experiences interacting with journalists in the national capital. “I am quite fascinated by this “sansani” factor in TV news. The performative aspect always interested me as potential subjects for a screenplay,” Pandey says. At present, while he is at work on various projects, after the success of Daadhi, which is yet to find a permanent streaming home, he is producing five commissioned short films.

Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but is making the right buzz in the film industry and film festival circles. We stream the film for a month on HT Premium, the subscription-only section on hindustantimes.com.

Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at Sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com

Producer: Perpetual Pictures

Writer and Director: Prashant Pandey

Budget: 9 lakhs (Self -funded)

Running time: 18 minutes

Language: Hindi

It is by now a stodgy pop culture — and national — cliché that TV newsrooms are vile. TRP greed fuelling narcissism, hysteria and lies — switch on TV news, and the screaming agents of TV news hysteria ambush you. It's not surprising that this setting has inspired more oversimplified, fly-on-the-wall screenplays in Hindi movies than fun or complex satires.

PREMIUM
A poster of Daadhi: The Beard (2022)(PERPETUAL PICTURES )

Prashant Pandey’s short film Daadhi: The Beard (2022) is a breezy exception. Combining satire, pathos and a big dollop of humour, he tells a funny, economical story.

The story goes: A failed method actor turned idealistic journalist who always pitches farmer suicide stories to his boorishly absurd boss, a TV showman, has to once save the channel by impersonating a Muslim fundamentalist on prime-time news debates. He puts on a fake beard, channelises what he has heard from a friendly Muslim autorickshaw driver, and almost has the ratings soar when an unexpected turn of events reveals his identity. But the really absurd twist of the story is that this fake Muslim man becomes the conscience-keeper of a community he doesn’t belong to. The laughs are had at the expense of all, writer-director Pandey disregarding rigid, preachy notes about religious discrimination. His screenplay motto is to laugh at all — and what a refreshing take that is. In fact, the protagonist, which actor Saharsh Kumar Shukla plays with understated competence, is a master of ideological subterfuge: The answers, he says, are blowing in the wind. In Hindi translation, especially in the schema of Daadhi, that line sounds less profound and more practical and gritty. Anupriya Goenka, a prolific actor in Hindi films and TV series, plays the other lead role and is also an executive producer in the film.

Watch the film trailer here:

Pandey, 43, was born and raised in Ayodhya, at a time, when he says the town went by a collectively accepted and unquestioned life mantra, “Samanvayvad” or coming together, adjustment and communion. “In practice, it roughly translates to each to his own. I don’t remember much tension or hostility among people from my early childhood. But around the late 80s, I remember many people came from other states, mainly Gujarat and Maharashtra, to work in Ayodhya, and of course, in the 1990s it became a different town,” Pandey says. 

A graduate of English literature, Pandey tried news reporting at ANI and other news writing and gathering stints before studying Mass Communication at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia and then moving to Mumbai to make it as a screenwriter and director. Pandey directed several episodes of the hit TV show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and went on to be mentored by Ram Gopal Varma. He wrote the script of Sarkar 2, Varma’s second in the Sarkar trilogy; he has also written song lyrics. “RGV taught me how to watch films like a director, and that was a kind of a turning point in my career,” Pandey says.

A still from Daadhi: The Beard (2022) (Perpetual Pictures)

In 2015, he produced, wrote and directed Stunt Boy, a child who is in love with violent films and who is completely insulated from violent realities around him. “This film continues to play in children’s film festivals across the world,” Pandey says.

This film is based on his experiences interacting with journalists in the national capital. “I am quite fascinated by this “sansani” factor in TV news. The performative aspect always interested me as potential subjects for a screenplay,” Pandey says. At present, while he is at work on various projects, after the success of Daadhi, which is yet to find a permanent streaming home, he is producing five commissioned short films.

Short Stream is a monthly curated section, in which we present an Indian film that hasn’t been seen before or not widely seen before but is making the right buzz in the film industry and film festival circles. We stream the film for a month on HT Premium, the subscription-only section on hindustantimes.com.

Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at Sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com

Producer: Perpetual Pictures

Writer and Director: Prashant Pandey

Budget: 9 lakhs (Self -funded)

Running time: 18 minutes

Language: Hindi

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